Through searchgate.net
Back in September of 2019, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced plans to detonate the Double Asteroid Retrieval Test (DART) spacecraft directly into an asteroid in 2024 to see if it has any effects.
The logic behind that mission is to see if there is any way to avoid an Earth-bound asteroid and prevent a gargantuan massacre. .
In August of 2019, as NASA prepared for the asteroid “Colossal God of Chaos” – which could enter Earth in the year 2068 – no one but Elon Musk said, ” a huge rock eventually hitting the Earth and we currently have no protection. ”
Which makes this latest news from JAXA, a Japanese equivalent of NASA, about their Hayabusa2 mission with the asteroid Ryugu a bit difficult.
Unveiled in a meaningful presentation at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on March 15 by Tokyo University planetary science professor Gaku Nishiyama, the fact was that the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 fired a 5.5-pound bullet at high speed using cost a 10-pounder with an asteroid didn’t even flinch.
The shot was supposed to perform an artificial impact broadcast operation, i.e. generate a fake impact crater, allowing JAXA to perform a seismic test on Ryugu.
What really happened was that the bullet, Small Carry-on Impact (SCI), left a crater that was about 33 feet across, but instead of sending impressive waves through Ryugu, the asteroid almost directly shifts its shoulders.
“A large stone was expected to move,” Nishiyama said. “However, no major movement of a boulder was observed.”
Related: Look at the most potentially dangerous asteroid to pass the earth in 2021
Significant surface change was expected to be induced by the impact-induced seismic waves; however, boulders remained in almost the same place.
We perform seismic wave propagation simulations to resolve this apparent difference and to understand the physical properties of Ryugu. We show that surface changes are largely dependent on shallow subsurface.
Our findings suggest that the conversion of impact energy to seismic waves is less efficient than previously thought. The weakness of a powdery mildew regolith can limit an asteroid earthquake at the surface.
Based on this idea, we propose a shape as the surface moves on asteroids that consider the obscure properties of regolith. The lack of seismic vibration agrees with the mysterious discovery that boulders live inconsistently on other boulders.
Basically, what JAXA says is that the surface dust on Ryugu dissipates energy from seismic waves much better than expected.
The Daily Star reports…
… That leaves the question of what makes Ryugu the smallest pits. There is no atmosphere, no seismic activity in itself, and now it seems that the space rock cannot be shaken by external influences.
Images from the Hayabusa2 cameras show that Ryugu has fewer small scales on the surface than expected for an asteroid of its size, suggesting that something is moving dust into the pits to fill them.
As one of the members of NASA’s Double Asteroid Reversal (DART) Test, Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen’s University Astrophysics Research Center in Belfast, said in December 2019, “We will get really bad once an asteroid effect. It may not be in our lives, but mother nature is in control when that happens. We need to do something about it. We need to move that asteroid so that it misses us and doesn’t hit us. “
Looks like we need a bigger DART spaceship.